Charita Goshay: Book-banning is un-American

Sunday

Sep 28, 2008 at 12:01 AMSep 28, 2008 at 7:05 AM

This week, libraries and book publishers around the country are observing “Banned Books Week.” Granted, every week of the year is designated for some cause, but this one’s important. The quickest way to lose your freedom is to lose access to the kind of knowledge needed to preserve it.

Charita Goshay

The U.S. Constitution is one of the most brilliant and forward-thinking documents ever created by humans.

It produced the miracle that is America -- a hodgepodge of people bound by a single, basic belief that everyone is endowed by his or her creator with certain, basic rights.

It often is said that it is the soldier who preserves our freedom. Plenty of nations around the world have armies, yet lack liberty. America is unique in that the freedoms espoused by the Constitution give our military something worth defending.

This week, libraries and book publishers around the country are observing “Banned Books Week.” Granted, every week of the year is designated for some cause, but this one’s important.

The quickest way to lose your freedom is to lose access to the kind of knowledge needed to preserve it.

Freedom of speech, be it written or spoken, is the life’s blood of any republic. Most Americans agree with that premise until it comes to a point of view with which they disagree.

Winston Churchill said, “Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”

The First Amendment protects the ugly and ignorant as much as it does the sanguine and inspirational. It safeguards a library’s right to offer “Daddy’s Roommate,” as well as the Koran, the Talmud or “Mere Christianity.”

Last month, the Ohio Southern District Court ruled correctly in upholding the rights of the Citizens for Community Values to use meeting rooms in the Upper Arlington Public Library near Columbus.

Library officials tried to argue that because the group is Christian-based, its meetings presumably contained elements that constitute a religious service. But it isn’t incumbent upon a library official to define what a “religious service” entails.

Freedom of speech is not dependent upon religious faith, but neither should it be used to discriminate against it. That said, the same measure should be applied when it comes to deciding which books should be permitted in public schools and libraries.

Over the years, some deemed as unfit have included “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” “Anne Frank,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “My Friend Flicka,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” “James and the Giant Peach,” “Captain Underpants,” “Where’s Waldo?” and “Fahrenheit 451,” a book, ironically, about censorship.

We recoil at the recollection of Nazi book-burnings -- which included Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” -- but it’s no coincidence that when a despotic government takes control, the first thing it does is limit access to knowledge.

To paraphrase former Library Journal editor-in-chief John Berry: If your library doesn’t contain material that is “dangerous,” it probably isn’t doing its job.

Contact Charita Goshay at charita.goshay@cantonrep.com

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